Perennials as Cut Flowers from Your Garden

Every garden should contain flowers that perform exceptionally as a garden plant, but also provide indoor pleasure as a cut flower. Without question, the primary cut flowers are sunflowers, zinnias and dianthus, but by adding seasonal perennials, your home grown flower arrangements take on a new dimension: a flower masterpiece.

Perennials are flowering machines. A single plant is usually covered with many flowers, making the flower harvest easy, and it does not impact the performance of your garden plant whatsoever. Perennial flowers have a very long vase life, often lasting a week or more. Perennials offer tremendous ranges of color from the softest white (Shasta daisy) to the most rich, deep red of echinacea (coneflower).

Perennials also supplement your home flower arrangement in a seasonal nature because they bloom at various times throughout the gardening season. Dianthus blooms early, echinacea and rudbeckia in mid-summer and asters in the fall. Your home grown flower arrangements change throughout the year, including winter where many perennials are exceptional for drying.

One of our favorite and best performing perennial cut flowers is the delphinium. Delphiniums bring stature and elegance to any flower arrangement because of their striking clear colors and upright habit. Filler flowers can be added in and around the delphiniums for an outstanding effect in vases.